3 Big Horse Racing Upsets

Sports are essentially entertainment. People watch it for the talent that they want to see and for the love of the game. However, one of the things that also keeps people watching their favorite sports is the fact that on any given night or day in any given sport, anything could happen.

One thing that people live for is upsets. Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath. For majority of the people, they like rooting for the underdog. Even if they don’t, whenever an underdog wins over the favorites, it is always a sight to behold.

An underdog story captures the imagination. It allows for people to hope and aspire to be something better and to do things they never thought possible.

Let’s take a look at three of the biggest horse racing upsets.

1993 Breeders Cup Classic

The first race that Horse Racing Information will be looking at is the Breeders Cup Classic of 1993. The horse Arcangues is the hero and underdog in this race. It is easy to say that this horse was an underground, but Arcangues came in to the race with 133-1 odds.

Thus, when Arcangues crossed the finish line in first place, everyone was dumbfounded.

Make no mistake, Arcangues was not a terrible race horse. In fact, coming in to the race, he already had a lot of wins on grass tracks all across Europe. However, he was not favored in dirt tracks, especially in the Breeders Cup.

You also need to take into consideration the sudden substitution of the jockey Jerry Bailey. Arcangues was a French horse you see, and Bailey didn’t know a single word of it. This means that Bailey could not instruct Arcangues the way he wanted.

This started the trend of having unpredictable horses win the Breeders Cup.

1913 Kentucky Derby

Next up, we have the Kentucky Derby of 1913. At the race, the horse Donerail was not a favorite by any stretch of the imagination. However, when Donerail came at the finishing line, passed favorite Ten Point, and won by half a length, it shocked a lot of people.

This race is known as one of the biggest upsets in history. This is so because it was one of the hugest long shots in the history of this race. To give you some perspective, if you bet at least $2 on Donerail in this specific race, you would have gotten more than $180 to win.

1919 Sandford Memorial Stakes

Finally, we have the Sandford Memorial Stakes of 1919. This is a massive upset made even bigger by the fact that Man O’ War was in it. Man O’ War is considered one of the best horses of all time. This race signified his only loss in the career.

The horse of the race is fittingly named Upset. Man O’ War was not far behind though when Upset won. Despite that, Upset will go down in history as the only horse to ever beat the legendary Man O’ War.

These are some notable horse racing upsets in history. As the years go by, we’ll be privy to many more horse racing upsets. And we’ll be right here to let you know about them.